


Once and Future Squire (and King)

by blueteak



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, M/M, Mentors, Spanking, light Violence, possible pre-slash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/pseuds/blueteak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robb Stark is captured by Tywin Lannister, who seems strangely reluctant to kill him. AU in that Robb had been Tywin's squire and no Red Wedding, but compliant other than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once and Future Squire (and King)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on the asoif kink meme: AU in which Robb had been fostered with Tywin for a few years. Then the events of the series (minus red wedding) occur and Robb ends up captured by Tywin, who teaches the King in the North his place.
> 
> Also: edited to include an allusion to one of Tywin's season two lines in GoT.

Robb tried fighting with his shackles rather than against them when he felt the spray of his guard’s blood against his face. He should have been prepared for it, he chided himself, but the Tywin Lannister he knew would never have cut down a defenseless man like that. At least not in the sight of others. A muffled shout, the distinctive sound of steel on steel and then a neck being snapped. Robb closed his eyes. Tywin had also killed the Lannister guards, eliminating all witnesses. It was just the two of them now.

Robb opened his eyes again when he sensed Tywin move out from behind him. His eyes would be permanently closed soon enough anyhow. He didn’t want it said he’d died a coward. 

Soon Tywin was before him, slightly grizzled with age and grizzly with blood not yet dried or cleaned off. Tywin’s gaze was hard, assessing, and Robb tried to break through it by bristling with Stark pride and conveying an unwillingness to bend. Robb would agree to no terms with a Lannister after what had happened to his father, even if the Lannister in question wasn’t Joffrey, or the Kingslayer, or an evil queen like something out of Nan’s tales, only worse. Even if the Lannister in question had been a second father to him. 

After a few minutes of locking eyes with Tywin, Robb had had enough. The certainty of death he could cope with. Interminable staring matches with it he could not. He glanced around the corpses strewn around them and said, as casually as he could “Tywin. I take it you want an audience after all?”

Tywin’s jaw clenched slightly at Robb’s use of his first name, but he did not chide Robb for his lack of form as he had done when Robb had been his squire. “An audience for what?” he asked levelly. 

Ah. Tywin was punishing him after all, making him say it. Well. He could say it and be proud. If anything was worth dying for, it was the defense of his family, and the north. “My execution,” he said, trying for Tywin Lannister’s lack of inflection and failing. But only just. This time he added “my lord,” but did not lower his eyes, which was how he came to see a slight crack in Tywin’s armor, a flash of pain that he couldn’t explain. 

All of a sudden, Tywin’s bloody knife was under his chin, forcing him to look away from Tywin or be cut. So. It was going to be a slit throat, not the block or a hanging. There was some comfort in that, really. It would be quick and he wouldn’t have to position himself or—

A slight pressure against his throat. “I asked you a question, boy” Tywin said. “Execution for what?” 

Robb almost sighed against the knife at his throat. When he had been a squire, Tywin had always made him list his sins before a punishment, whether that punishment was to plot a successful ambush in a short amount of time and take a thrashing if he failed or, more rarely, just a thrashing. 

And so Robb dutifully recited what Tywin would see as his wrongdoings. “For taking up arms against Joffrey Baratheon. For reclaiming the title ‘King of the North’.” 

Tywin took the knife from Robb’s throat. Robb expected a quick strike to end it now that he’d admitted his supposed wrongs, but instead Tywin threw the knife to the ground and smiled an infuriatingly indulgent smile. “You’re just a boy, not a king.”

“And Joffrey’s a man grown, is he?” Robb retorted before he could stop himself. 

“Joffrey has much to learn. As do you.” 

“Hard to learn without a head,” Robb shot back, once again horrified at having slipped so easily back into the rapport he’d shared with Tywin as his squire. 

Tywin’s expression shuttered, but not before Robb again caught sight of an emotion he couldn’t quite name. 

“Haven’t you heard that you’re impossible to kill?” Tywin asked.

Robb smiled, forgetting, for the moment, the corpses strewn around him and the trickle of blood down his throat giving lie to Tywin’s statement. In his mind, he was back in the main hall, his bannermen shouting their support, legends of Robb Stark and Grey Wind being shared as freely as the wine. But why would Tywin mention this? He was ruthlessly efficient, not needlessly cruel, as Robb knew from numerous lessons. He wouldn’t talk this way if he intended to kill Robb, but surely he must? He wouldn’t leave him to Joffrey, would he? It was time to find out. 

“I have heard that, yes,” Robb said. Then he brought his manacled hands to the trickle of blood at his throat. “But if any man can kill me, it’ll be you.” 

Robb had expected Tywin to jest, to thank him for the flattery, anything other than to look, for a moment, absolutely furious. 

Tywin quickly brought himself back under control. “You’re a boy who overstepped his bounds when his father died. You’ll go back home with a minder and do as you’re told.”

So that was why Tywin had killed the Lannister guards. He had wanted no witnesses to the terms he was giving Robb. Not that Robb, his dignity wounded and his reputation at stake, would take them, even at the risk of his life. “So my bannermen are armed nurses, are they? I called them, claimed my title, and defeated your armies. Twice. Send me away and I’ll come back with more men and take Joffrey’s head home on a spike.”

At that, Tywin slapped him, sending him to his knees. He braced his hands against the ground, trying to lever himself up, to die fighting, but Tywin stepped on his chains, keeping him down. He heard a clatter behind him. Tywin’s sword belt. This was the end, then. He would die on all fours like a dog. Or a wolf. He closed his eyes, strangely calm, and waited for the blow to fall. 

Instead of cold steel at his neck, however, he felt a line of fire blazing across his backside. He cried out before he could stop himself, but then clamped his lips shut. He was King in the North, not Tywin Lannister’s bloody squire any longer, and he was going to refuse to acknowledge that this was happening. He’d been prepared to die. A thrashing was not something he was quite able to process.

Tywin seemed to take that as a challenge, putting all of his still considerable strength into the next few blows, making Robb rock forward and bite his lip bloody in an effort to keep from shouting. It had never hurt this much when he had been a squire. Then again, he had never declared himself king and had an army at his back during that period. After the tenth stroke, Robb sensed that the blows were not as harsh, though his backside still burned and Tywin showed no sign that his mercy would extend to ending this embarrassing and painful punishment at any point in the near future. Robb would remain on his hands and knees, bottom presented for Tywin's strap, for as long as Tywin desired. Robb thanked the gods that his breeches had been left up, but it hardly seemed to matter. He could feel each stroke land as if on bare skin, biting into the flesh where his bottom met his thighs before moving back up to redden the rest.

At the twentieth blow, Robb finally ground out a threat. “While they say that I cannot be killed, they’ve never said the same about you.”

Tywin, instead of hitting him harder, laughed, dropped the sword belt, and pulled Robb to his feet, carefully wiping the sweat, blood, and tears from his face even as Robb attempted to turn away from him, not wanting to show how much it had hurt. “You could try, but I don’t believe you want to kill me. You’ve still too much to learn." Robb was momentarily at a loss for words, though he wished that looks could indeed kill. Tywin, who had just wiped that last of the moisture from Robb's eyes, continued before Robb could interrupt. "You defeated me before, yes," he allowed, then patted Robb's throbbing arse with insulting gentleness. "But I’ve just thrashed you, literally and on the field.”

Robb, glaring, opened his mouth to retort, but Tywin placed a warning finger over his lips. “You’d happily kill my son, daughter, and grandson, I know. No need to tell me just how and how much you’d enjoy it, unless you’d like another dose of the strap." Robb was about to tell Tywin anyway and force his hand, wanting to see just how far he would take this ridiculous charade of treating him like a child. He must have been broadcasting his intentions, for Tywin, with a look Robb remembered from his days as a squire, a look that said Tywin would punish him harshly even if he did enjoy his company, said "You were brave earlier and managed your emotions well. But now I’ve humiliated you and you’re becoming reckless. Remember your training, lad.”

Robb did as asked and schooled his features as Tywin had taught him, never mind that he was currently fighting Tywin. “I think you mean ‘Your Grace.’ I stopped answering to ‘lad’ a few years back.”

“You’ll always answer to ‘lad’ with me, Robb Stark.”

Robb refrained from rolling his eyes, refusing to dignify Tywin’s words with a response. He wanted to know what Tywin was going to do with him, how he was going to keep him from Joffrey, why his head wasn’t already on a spike being paraded through town. He only asked the one word, though. “Why?”

And then he and Tywin were back to staring at one another. This time, however, Tywin’s gaze softened and Robb thought he finally understood, though Tywin’s words did not explain the depths of it. “I trained you as one of my own, though you are a Stark and think yourself a king. Your head on a spike would be a waste.”

“And what will you use me as now? A whipping boy?” 

“Don’t tempt me. You will however, join me in the solar and provide me with plans to best repel Stannis in under an hour or find yourself facing my strap again, this time with a live audience and a little less of your dignity. You may not be able to be killed, Robb Stark, but you can certainly be thrashed.”

And so Tywin Lannister saved Robb Stark from Freys, Baratheons, Boltons, and other Lannisters by turning the King in the North back into a squire, until Westeros had torn itself apart and Robb became king again.


End file.
